He was balancing on the horse with boots on stirrups, both hands free on the bow, screaming with rage after each arrow shot. He passed next to the stakes, galloping even closer to me, as I was backing away. He was aiming backward for the most difficult shot, showing off. Gunna, the greatest warrior I had seen. That, I was certain. We are all so certain of so many things when we’re young.
And then it happened right in front of me. The brown mare’s front leg sank in the ground. A blind puddle? The horse’s back arched hard, both knees and its head bent forward and hit the dirt. Gunna came flying out of the saddle, landing flat on his back a few feet away from me. A dull thump came out of the ground and a deadly cracking snap out of his bones. The horse rolled to its right side breathing heavily, while Gunna lay on his back next to me, motionless like a fallen tree trunk. I knelt next to him, my torch lighting a rictus of pain. His back and left leg were at bad angles, and his neck was not moving. He was as still as a corpse. He wasn’t screaming in pain. Those who are in the worse kind of pain never cry. They can’t. It hurts. He only tried to whisper.
“Red…”
“Stay put. Don’t talk,” I answered.
He whispered again something like “Red…first.”
Red first? Red band? What on the Demon’s name are you trying to tell me, Gunna? “Shhh, shut up now, here they’re coming, we’ll help you. Stay put, Gunna. You’ll be fine.” Damn you! No, you won’t.
I had seen that too many times before. Long ago, in the second spring of the Uncarved, another two of our Pack had fallen. One had broken his head, and the other, a wrist. Fiery rage consumed our Guides whenever this shame came upon the Pride of the Sieve. Someone they had raised for so many summers, chosen by the Ouna-Mas and Enaka. Someone they had ripped away from a mother and a father he would never know, without shedding a tear, just to die like that. To be killed or crippled by a bad fall without even seeing the face of an othertriber in battle.
Gunna was still alive. The pain had turned his cheeks into the color of white cloth and he couldn’t utter a word despite trying hard. The Guides and the Uncarved had gathered around us now, but no one was trying to move Gunna. They knew.
“Iron End! Iron End!” shouted those around me.
“Give him an Iron End!”
Iron End. Another not so ancient custom. Some of the eldest remembered when Khun-Mervak, the fourth Khun, had initiated it not many winters ago. Someone from the same hut had to end the boy’s suffering with an iron. A blade, an arrow, a quick end that Enaka would favor. Either Malan or I. Gunna was crying silently in front of us, desperate tears that couldn’t even run down his cheeks.
Chaka turned to Malan with a dejected look and made the move I dreaded: his palm facing down flying fast and flat across his throat. And yet I was relieved he hadn’t chosen me, though only for a moment.
Malan left the field for a while and came back with a stretcher. He approached Gunna and gave him from a waterskin to drink, but Gunna couldn’t. He tried to pull Gunna onto the stretcher.
“Don’t touch him! He is in pain…he…” I shouted. I had no words.
Malan was on one knee, trying to pull Gunna onto the stretcher without luck. He raised his head, his angry stare fixed on me.
“‘Iron End,’ they said, Da-Ren. Are you going to help? Else get out of here, now.”
Gunna’s moaning hid much greater pain. Malan called a Guide to help him. The Guide obeyed, and they carried the stretcher with Gunna on it away.
“Where are they going?” I asked.
I looked around me. Not a single face I knew. A few Uncarved Starlings were there, but I didn’t even remember their names after two moons in the Forest. A Reghen with no other name. I was alone. There were no other Uncarved from my Pack still alive around me. No one answered me. They were looking at Malan, his red band.
Malan stopped close to the hole where Gunna’s horse had fallen and put the stretcher down. He filled that hole and another next to it with dirt and knelt to whisper something into Gunna’s ear.
The brief Story that would be on everyone’s lips around our fires from the following night onward was this: “Malan told Gunna why he had woken in the middle of the night before the trial: to mark all the holes of the fields. That was why he was coming second most of the day because he avoided all the bad spots. He had marked them in his mind, one by one.”
Good Stories become immortal, even if they are only a big lie. This Story would live forever if Malan was chosen as the next Khun, the One Leader of the Tribe. A Leader needed his own Stories, and a Tribe without Stories could not survive. Whether they were lies or real or—as usual—something in between the two, mattered not. They just had to be good.
But on the night I heard the Story for the first time, I knew right then why Malan had asked that they change fields and why he had woken up in the middle of the night: to dig out the holes himself.
We all followed Malan and Gunna at a distance. They had reached the Forest’s edge. Malan stopped, took out his blade, and carved Gunna twice, in both arms and his chest. The injured boy’s white tunic was soaked on his own blood. Malan took off Gunna’s boots. Gunna lay in the dirt, only his eyes twitching and darting from side to side. Malan left him there all alone and turned to walk toward us. Gunna’s wrists and ankles were bare.
“How do the Uncarved die?”
“They bleed to death,” the older ones had told us on our first moon as Starlings.
Not even the Guides stopped Malan. They knew that in three moons he would be the One Leader.
I didn’t have to see the fourteen eyes glowing like embers. I heard them. The wolves—not the Uncarved or the Wolfmen, the wolves—the four legged, the hungry, appeared at the edge of the Forest. The blood and the night had called them. If we left Gunna there, they would soon be all over him. They would go first for his ankles and his wrists. The poor boy could not do anything to defend himself. I had no doubts his spine was broken. He was not going to die well.
“We’re finished here. Everyone, back to your huts,” Malan said.
I bit my lip, my eyes cutting fast from Gunna to Malan as he kept walking away. Everybody obeyed in total silence.
I signaled to the smallest Starling next to me.
“Hey, come here.”
I took his torch and pushed him away.
“What are you doing? An Iron End, they said,” I yelled at Malan.
He turned and came up to me a few feet in distance.
“His wolf ancestors will take care of him. They’ll protect him,” he said with a low, but clear, reassuring voice and turned to walk away.
Didn’t I know by now? I should have seen it five long winters ago. Darkness and madness reigned in Malan’s head. Was it only I who could see this, or was I blind with envy? No one made a move. Malan made for the huts, and everyone followed him. I grabbed from the back the neck of the young Uncarved next to me. I took his bow and its quiver. I was also an Uncarved Wolf. Protector of the Tribe. I could bring an Iron End myself.
I ran toward Gunna and lit with my torch the dried twigs I found around him. The wolves waited at a distance. They were in no hurry. They had all night. I was alone. It would be their feast sooner or later.
At my feet, Gunna lay taller than ever before. The boy was at the seventeenth fall of his life. A fateful fall. His eyes had no peace in them. They were carving his agony in my heart. Silent screams were his plea for help. Live, die. He lifted two fingers signaling me next to him. I knelt, my ear next to his mouth.
“Red…”
Again, the same. What was he saying? “What?”
“Redbreast…” he whispered.
“Redbreast? Is this what you’re telling me? You’re funny, you, big warrior. Close your eyes, rest. I’m here.”
The blood all over his tunic. Redbreast? Making a joke? Fuck you, Gunna, fuck you for dying on me and having me kill you. You are the last one I have left.
I raised my bow.
His lips were trembling
. Begging. Still breathing.
“I can’t save you, friend. I don’t have such magic.”
In the heart. Two demon fangs, the broad iron arrowheads. The only way the giant would die quickly.
A prayer. Make one up, Da-Ren. Enaka, I beg you to accept him. Don’t send him down to the cold fucking caves. His eyes stopped twitching. I wipe away your tears, my friend. They are mine. No one will see them. You die brave. His wrists and ankles would not suffer from the wolves. There was no way for me to carry his body. It was too heavy. The wolves would not let me.
I ran back to join the rest of the boys. Malan, the First, was waiting for me, standing in front of everyone else.
“Again, a stupid mistake, Da-Ren. I told you to get lost.”
I was still holding my bow.
The boys were looking at him as if they expected something more. He made some hesitant steps toward my side. I would strangle him if he got closer. He stopped and took two steps back. All he would dare to do was talk.
“It was not for you to do anything, Da-Ren. Gunna was mine. You will do what I—” he started saying.
I nocked the one arrow I had left on my bow and raised it.
We were both trying to look calm and strong. But my head was boiling hard.
I pulled the bowstring, aiming for his chest.
His legs froze. He looked around to see if anyone was there to save him.
A Reghen jumped between us. Unlike us, he was shaking.
Bera, the ninestar, came toward me. “Stand down, Da-Ren,” he said, trying to find his calming voice.
My hands were trembling. It was not fear.
“Stand down, Da-Ren, or you die here.”
I was biting my lip hard to hold myself from releasing the arrow. Bera slowly lowered my left arm to bring my aim downward, away from Malan. I released. The arrow flew low at an angle and hit the ground between Malan’s dusty boots.
The four-legged wolves were howling at the Forest’s edge as the brave, muscled body of Gunna welcomed them. At dawn, I alone would gather whatever remained and take it to the pyre.
Malan disappeared in the hut that the two of us were left to share.
“He’s a mad jackal. Doesn’t anyone see that?” I asked Bera.
“You are the weak one. Malan did the right thing,” the Reghen blurted out.
He was a young Reghen. About my age.
“You, stupid boy! I hope your horse finds that mud puddle someday,” I said.
No one had ever called a Reghen “stupid boy” until then. It was like spitting the One Hundred of them in the face. And every one of their Stories and Truths.
But I didn’t want any more of the Reghen’s Truths.
It was the first time during my five winters’ training that I met a challenge I didn’t care for.
Gunna’s torture brought no enjoyment to me.
I had not planned it for many moons like Malan had.
I had been poisoned in the Forest.
Blue was the poison of Zeria, of the Kar-Tioo pond.
I was not a Reekaal.
Chaka, the Chief Guide, who had been seeking only One for countless summers, came next to me, his face cold as if I had just crossed his path for the first and last time.
“You are not the One.”
That was all he said. But I knew that already.
I was not born to be Khun.
I realized it suddenly, harshly, mercilessly, and irreversibly, as I heard from a distance the feasting of the wolves. As unbelievable as it sounded in my own head, I didn’t look forward to being Khun. I didn’t have it in me. I cared about the brave. A Leader draws his strength from the weak. Maybe I still had the desire to lead the brave to the glory and slaughter of the Final Battle. But I had no desire to put my dick deep into the brains of the weak, which was pretty much everybody, just to mess around with them.
I couldn’t bear to accept that someone was better than I. I couldn’t bear having to bow my head to any other Uncarved or Guide. Above all, I couldn’t bear the moment in a few moons’ time when I would have to say the words “Khun-Malan, my Great Leader.” But none of this was enough of a reason to become Khun.
The Reghen were right. All the others who had given me slanted looks when I had put Gunna out of his misery were right. They were right for one simple reason: it was what they wanted. It was what they could believe and sing. Malan’s Story. You can’t go against the Khun, the one the Unending Sky shines upon. He is the Legend of Legends. You bring your blade down on him and find only air instead of his heart. Your arrows fall between his boots, never higher.
And the Khun knows how to lead the many, those who seek the Witches’ signs, the Stories.
“They have been riding better since that night,” Chaka said to Bera a few days later.
He made sure I was next to them, listening.
“Who?” asked Bera.
“The younger Uncarved. They take care of their horses, they rest them, and they look out for the puddles.”
“What are you saying, Chief?”
“Malan did well. He made them better warriors without even opening his mouth. I say that no Uncarved will fall from his horse again while Malan is among us. Or, by Enaka, I’ll sit still and you can piss on me.”
Gunna’s flesh and Malan’s madness fed the Tribe and gave it strength.
That Legend lived for many winters to come. From the night Malan left Gunna at the edge of the Forest, they said that no Uncarved was ever again mortally wounded falling from his horse in training. Many summers passed without losing another boy. Only the Story of Gunna and Malan was spoken. Nothing about Gunna’s Iron End. And that was the only Truth the Reghen would sing.
They didn’t carve me that same night, though many of them wanted to. Even I did. There had to be at least one second Uncarved. But they did exile me for good to the hut of the Uncarved Eagles, together with six younger ones who would never become Leaders. Malan would be alone in our old hut. “To protect you from killing each other,” they said, but, at night, Reghen and Ouna-Mas came and went from Malan’s hut. I also saw Sah-Ouna slipping in one night. And a second.
I now counted the moons we had left on the fingers of my one hand. If Khun-Taa did not die soon, then the Truth declared that both Malan and I had to be carved. But something told me that Khun-Taa’s death was coming fast.
During the next few nights, funny stories popped around the dung fires about Reekaal who shat themselves when Malan went near the Forest. Even if he had never actually been in the Forest himself. Everyone had forgotten what had happened during the last Great Feast of Spring at Wolfhowl. The Goddess had shadowed their minds. Enaka sheds light on the True Leader and darkens all his foes around him.
I had been gone for a long time, longer than even Sah-Ouna would have wished. The Story of my brave legendary father had been forgotten in the Forest, and Rouba, my only real father, had died there also. Zeria had rescued my soul and hid it in an oak’s hollow. She had reached the caves of the dead to claim it back.
There would be more sacred ceremonies and other bloody rituals, but the next Leader of the Tribe, the sixth Khun, had been chosen ahead of all this. Everyone knew that.
“If Khun-Taa dies, then Malan will be the first Khun whom I ever trained. He is the One. And that is the way it has always been,” said Chaka. “The Reghen say that back in the beginning, every night when we had to choose the new Khun among the surviving Uncarved—” He stopped for a few breaths as the young Uncarved were hanging from his mouth to hear his words. “—there was never any question. When that night comes, everyone knows already who he is.”
Why should he whip me when he could utter such words with a broad smile?
My quest ended and my shame became complete on that first night when I slept in the hut of the younger Uncarved. At dawn, I would wake up in a peace I had never known. I would not be Khun; no more would I chase, like a stupid dog, some bone they had thrown in front of me. I had become a warrior and a man in my own
campaign, in my own trial, in my own Forest, and my training was now complete.
That was what I said to myself before I went to sleep. So that I could sleep.
Defeat sleeps cold and alone, always looking for some excuse to snuggle under.
XXXI.
The Witch, the Amazon, the Cow
Island of the Holy Monastery, Thirty-fourth winter.
According to the Monk Eusebius.
We were approaching the second anniversary of Da-Ren’s arrival at the Castlemonastery when we completed the first transcription of his story. Da-Ren waited in vain to see Baagh’s trireme emerge from the waves of the open sea, together with the powerful Sorcerers of the Cross.
“There are no such men whom Baagh knows, only old hermits, Anchorites,” the First Elder told me once after Baagh had disappeared.
No one came, and we didn’t have any news from Baagh. We had only the first draft of Da-Ren’s tale after nine hard months of writing. It was quite a sterile account of the events, written with a quick and abrupt style using the few words that he knew.
Monastic life had sucked the warrior out of the arms and eyes of Da-Ren. His frame had become leaner, and his weakness made him more acceptable—more like the rest of us. He now wore a brown hooded robe, without the embroidered cross. Not gray like the monks’. It made him look more like a merchant than a monk, as he had bought it, along with a pair of sturdy sandals, new from the ship that brought our supplies. The boots he had been wearing when he had arrived were suitable only for the harsh winters on the island, and by now, they had become useless.
The only work that kept our thoughts away from Baagh and his empty promises was the storytelling, especially his. Baagh had ordered me to write down every detail, and Da-Ren, who wanted to get it finished as quickly as possible, was getting irritated during the first year.
Drakon Book II: Uncarved Page 17
